Large machinery and construction equipment require large, durable, and heavy-duty components to enable them to carry extensive payloads and otherwise perform the jobs that are required of them. When one of these components fails, a worker tasked with the repair must not only possess the mechanical skill and knowledge involved in the repair or replacement, but also the physical strength to maneuver and position the components as needed. It is especially challenging when the repair or replacement must be completed in the field and without the equipment a repair shop would use to aid in the repair or replacement, including overhead lifts, winches, and other tools used to move heavy parts.
One example that highlights this problem of performing a repair on large machinery outside of a repair shop is when a tire of a dump truck is punctured, torn, or otherwise fails when the dump truck is out in the field. Once the driver of the dump truck identifies the damaged tire—often with a very loud sound—he or she must immediately stop the vehicle or risk damaging adjacent tires due to the rubber and steel bands in the damaged tire lacerating the sidewalls of nearby tires. The driver must then either attempt to replace the tire themselves, which conventionally virtually never occurs, or they must call for someone to come assist with replacing the tire. Tire replacement by the driver happens so rarely because most dump trucks do not carry spare tires, since there is often no place for the spare tire to be stored on the truck, and because even if a spare tire was present, it is too heavy for a single dump truck driver to maneuver themselves. Unlike passenger car tires or similar tires, dump truck tires are very large and very heavy, often weighing upwards of 200 lbs.; too great for one person to move without assistance. For this reason, it is almost unheard of for a dump truck driver to replace his or her own damaged tire in the field.
The only practical way to replace the tire is to contact a mechanic or repair shop that will drive out to the location of the disabled dump truck and bring a new tire to replace the damaged one. As one could imagine, this situation is highly inefficient. Not only is it frustrating to the driver, the owner of the dump truck, and the party awaiting whatever payload the dump truck is carrying to need to wait for the new tire to arrive and for the repair to be completed, it is highly economically inefficient to have an expensive piece of equipment temporarily out of use. If the dump truck is located in a remote location or if the tire requires repair during non-working hours of nearby repair shops, the dump truck can sit idle waiting for the repair for many hours. The cost from the downtime of such a situation occurring can easily exceed many hundreds of dollars, easily over one thousand dollars depending on the situation. Outside of the economics, such a situation effectively prevents a dump truck driver from exercising self-sustenance, instead requiring them to be fully reliant on others.
Thus, a heretofore unaddressed need exists in the industry to address the aforementioned deficiencies and inadequacies.